11 March 2022
By Diego Chisena, software and monitoring hardware offering manager, Vertiv
Data centre construction is booming in Europe with new project builds increasing by 60% from 2021–2022, compared with the 2019–2020 period. Additionally, the European data centre market is expecting revenue growth of up to 46% over the next three years.
Large investments in today’s data centres and the adoption of edge computing sites mean operators are faced with managing more distributed environments.
To leverage the introduction of advanced toolkits, operators must aggregate and manage monitoring software holistically. This is in addition to the pressure operators are under to increase data centre availability, utilisation and uninterruptible service in the face of outages.
Here, operators are turning to date centre management tools to improve operational efficiency and the health of their equipment.
Adopting today’s data centre management software solutions allows operators to collect the data required to run critical infrastructure effectively and efficiently.
Providing a comprehensive view of a system’s operational performance, a data centre management tool gives real-time monitoring and insight to help govern capacity, maintain high availability readiness and reduce risk.
By alerting operators to critical problems caused by mechanical or human error, infrastructure monitoring deployment means issues can be identified proactively, resulting in reducing or eliminating outages.
When investigating the solutions afforded by monitoring technology, it’s important to examine the situations causing the pain points in managing your data centre or critical facility.
Against this backdrop, here are the key functions to consider when implementing a data centre management solution.
Data centre operators need to know the equipment availability and capacity in their facility to identify changes for peak performance. The best tools allow operators to easily place and monitor specific devices based on system intelligence. By doing so, you can tailor the processes bespoke to your organisation’s needs.
Furthermore, the introduction of data centre management software can overcome the most persistent obstacles to the remote management of distributed and hybrid architectures. Built on a common architecture, with open standards, platforms and APIs, it enables fast and scalable deployments of critical infrastructure equipment from the enterprise to edge to match data centre growth.
Modern data centre management solutions support a secure remote working experience, allowing systems data to be accessed and controlled quickly and seamlessly. In turn, this helps operators meet worker demands for today’s advanced engineering and design requirements and high-resolution streaming applications.
As infrastructure becomes more complex, remote visibility and access to critical devices provide the means for operators to ensure users have uninterrupted access to perform their daily activities.
Data centre monitoring tools enable better power system management. Having a comprehensive view of the data centre power system, from incoming utility power to rack power distribution, creates a dynamic one-line diagram, helping to ensure business continuity.
Operators can forecast power consumption based on current and historical data. Using data centre capacity objectives, you can plan deployments and map out your IT equipment’s dependency on the power system, aiding in risk assessment.
Another element of data centre management is the provision of advanced thermal management capabilities, evenly distributing available cooling capacity between IT devices and the facility. Its tools enable monitoring, reporting, and alarm management for the entire mechanical chain.
Offering around-the-clock access to your data centre through your mobile device, data centre management gives real-time visibility into your critical facility. This allows you to maximise capacity, prevent unplanned downtime, and monitor overall efficiency performance.
With budget and performance in mind, it’s important to select scalable monitoring tools that allow implementation to be timed and aligned with your changing business needs.
Operators should decide what functionality is most essential by beginning with the main issues negatively impacting operations. As priorities change, so too should your infrastructure and monitoring plan.
While data centre management software can help organisations realise the advantages of increased utilisation, optimised efficiency and greater staff productivity, it’s not a magic bullet.
When planning monitoring initiatives, you must consider what technological and infrastructure software innovations will come next. For example, a strictly reactive approach to managing issues within your critical facilities may not be enough for your organisation to achieve its availability and sustainability goals.
You may need a more predictive approach that’s built on the foundation of infrastructure monitoring solutions, such as data centre management as a service (DMaaS). This is about tapping into a larger data lake, integrating operational data, and analysing at scale to inform all aspects of critical facility management.
With expanding use of data-intensive technologies and IT platforms in more locations outside the traditional confines, data centre management platforms must evolve to meet these challenges and accommodate next-generation applications.
Operators utilising a holistic approach via data centre monitoring solutions are better equipped to proactively identify issues before they escalate.
By using these tools, operators can ensure the right information goes to the right people at the right time, resulting in better management decisions, reducing day-to-day costs and increasing efficiency.
